This invention relates to a user interface for use particularly as part of a portable, or an in-vehicle (mobile) wireless telecommunications apparatus.
There is an ever-increasing demand to be able to access data from remote computers from anywhere via portable or mobile telecommunications devices. This is exemplified by the increase in the usage of WAP (Wireless Application Protocol). WAP allows users of mobile or portable phones to access specially designed WWW pages, and display them on the usually relatively small displays of their phones.
As display technology improves, and the price of displays drops, then it will become increasingly feasible to supply high-resolution pages of information to mobile or portable devices. This will be especially true for vehicle-mounted equipment where there is not such an emphasis on size constraints.
One of the advantages of the WWW is the manner in which one can easily jump from page to page via the use of so-called hypertext links. These can normally be identified from WWW pages by the use of a different colored typeface and underlining. To activate the link and go to the referenced page, when using a PC, the user simply moves the mouse to correspondingly move the cursor over the link text, and clicks the mouse button. This sends a request to the remote computer to send the new page of information. By following links in this manner, it is relatively straightforward to navigate around complex sites using only the mouse, with little or no keyboard intervention.
However, when using a mobile (i.e. vehicle-mounted) or portable (i.e. carried by hand) device, the provision of a suitable mouse-like device can be difficult, and even if it can be provided, using it while driving, for instance, can be dangerous. This problem can affect the ease with which the user can navigate the WWW, and consequently restricts the usefulness to the user of the WWW.